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Adult Children

10 months ago

The Family Patterns You Can Choose to End

I was 60 when I realized the words I used with my son weren’t mine. They were my mother’s. And before that, my grandmother’s. Three generations saying “stop crying” when feelings got big. Three generations of kids learning emotions weren’t safe. I’d spent 40 years as a healthcare…

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10 months ago

Have You Had “The Talk” with Your Adult Children?

If we haven’t already, we need to make sure we’ve had “the talk” with our children by the time we reach retirement. This does not refer to the infamous sex talk we have with our children during their pre-teen stage, but about our end-of-life…

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10 months ago

How to Let Go of Responsibility for Your Adult Child’s Choices

By the time we reached our 50s and 60s, most of us thought the hardest years of parenting were behind us. The toddler tantrums, the teenage battles, the sleepless nights – we survived them all. We figured the hard part was done. We thought we had “earned” the rest. But then adulthood…

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11 months ago

When Love and Money Get Tangled: How to Tell if You’re Financially Enmeshed with Your Adult Children

Most women over 60 I talk to love their children deeply and want the best for them. That often means offering help, sometimes financial help, when they’re struggling. After all, what mother doesn’t want her child to feel secure? But what happens when the giving…

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11 months ago

When “All I Want Is for You to Be Happy” Turns Out to Be a Big Ask

When I held my first newborn, I whispered, “All I want is for you to be happy.” It felt like the most generous wish I could make – no demands about who he should become, no rigid life plan to follow. Just happiness. Decades later, I realized that was a much bigger expectation…

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11 months ago

Making Peace with Your Adult Children When Things Haven’t Turned Out the Way You Expected

Let’s just say it: This isn’t how you thought it would be. You didn’t imagine your child avoiding your calls. You didn’t picture a strained holiday dinner, or worse, an empty seat. You didn’t expect silence, tension, or unspoken resentments. And yet – here you are…

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12 months ago

Helping Adult Children Financially – Creative Ways to Help

In this blog series, we’ve covered many ways to help adult children financially, including education, childcare, housing, and retirement. In this final post of the series, we’ll cover some other areas that can also be used to help: investment accounts, life insurance and annuities, real estate…

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12 months ago

Let’s Talk About Our Lifelong Search for Intimacy

If the infamous ‘man from Mars’ were to suddenly arrive on this earth, what would he think that people were all about? From scanning traditional media, not to mention social media, I would surmise that he would see a search for wealth…

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1 year ago

Did You Parent from Your Own Past Pain? Forgive Yourself and Move On

Parenting is hard. Parenting while carrying your own childhood wounds? Even harder.
Many of us brought our pasts into motherhood without even realizing it. We didn’t set out to repeat old patterns or project our pain – but sometimes, that’s exactly what happened…

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1 year ago

Why I Don’t Charge My Kids Rent to Live at Home

In a world where everything comes with an enormous price tag, I’ve made a deliberate choice not to charge my six kids rent to live at home. It’s not because I’m against teaching responsibility or preparing them for adulthood. It’s because I believe in giving them the kind of support…

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